BT and Virgin Broadband – Vive la Différence?

With our upcoming office move, one of the many things to sort out is moving our broadband.

We have two broadband lines – one is your traditional broadband-over-a-phoneline from BT and the other is Virgin (formerly Telewest/NTL) cable broadband. We have two lines for two reasons. The first is to separate voice and data (we use VOIP for our phones), and the second is redundancy. If one fails, the other is likely to still be working.

Dealing with BT and Virgin to get the lines moved were two very different experiences.

I can’t work out which I’m happiest with.

With Virgin I was speaking to a human with a few seconds and five minutes later everything was organised for me. However, it did cost £150 and will take 15-20 business days to be processed.

With BT I was on hold for what felt like an eternity, the lady who eventually took my call had to keep putting me on hold to deal with basic questions. In all, it took about 45 minutes. But the cost to move the line is £25 and it’ll be done within 5 working days.

So both pleased me and annoyed me in different ways. If BT could have got me through to a human quickly and not kept putting me on hold they’d have been the stand-out winner.

Do you use an annoying “push 1 for this, push 2 for that” system on your telephone lines? We can if we want to with our VOIP provider, but we don’t. I do know of a few small companies that do though (don’t worry Simon, I wont name and shame!).

It’s not big and it’s not clever. I guess it’s another of those small things that make a big difference.